Morning journal and courier., 1887-02-16
CAUSES OF COLDS.
An Observer Claims They Are Peeu-
 liar to Civilized I.ife

An Observer Claims They Are Peeu- liar to Civilized Life.
 Andrew Van Bibber in the Scientific American l
 Reading recently an article of Dr. Brown Sequard on "Taking Cold" it occurred to me that colds peculiar to civilized life and to our comfortable, warm rooms. have had colds perhaps as frequently as any, one, but during one period of my life I was entirely free from them with one exception
 I served through the war in the Fifth Ohio cavalry, beginning at Shiloh and ending my service with the march to the sea. We were exposed to all weathers and all seasons. Many time we were rained on for week or more. When the sun came out the next week or the week after it dried us. Many time long after dark, after a march in rain and mud all day, we have been filed into miry woods, where we slept in the rain with the running water washing be- tween us and our blankets. I have seen men wake in the morning with their hair frozen in the mud. But none of us caught cold. We swan the Tennessee river after midnight when the mercury was at zero, and among floating ice, and came out with our clothes to our armpits frozen like sheet iron, and then marched till morning. In the cold winter of 1S63-64 we were in the mountainous country of east Tennessee, where it is as cold as Ohio. We were there from November until March without any tents or shelter of any kind, moving every day and sleeping in different place every night, with the temperature fre- quently below zero.
 l have, with my comrades, ridden upon the skirmish line when I could not lift 8 cartridge out of my box, nor even pick up carbine cap. l have been on night pick cts mounted when the pickets had to be relieved every fifteen minutes, because if left longer the men could not load and fire. But we never caught the slightest cold, nor did ever in times of cold and exposure to wet soldier with a cold.
 But I did catch one cold in the army, and I never had such one before since. It came from excessive comfort or what Davies, Miss, the southern outpost of the great fortress of CoTinth Having been there some months we began to build neat log cabins with openings for doors and windows-ne glass or doors of course.
 Que of our mess being a young brick layer, we thought to surpass our neighbors in style and comfort and we sent for brick, and he built us large chimney and fireplace and we built good fire. That settled us. Four of us had to go to the hospital with tremendous colds on our chests and in our heads. We never had such heavy colds in our lives. IhlS was about the middle or our three years of service, and before and after that ! never saw an exposed soldier with cold. (Of course few days after our cabins were finished we got marching orders.) believe all old soldiers will bear me out that in active campaigns where there was great exposure to the weather no one had cold. And come to think of it, in my experience. in Colorado and Utah in recent years never saw an Indian with cold, though they stand more exposure than our cattle do. It is our hot rooms that give us our colds. If per- son would camp out from fall till spring, ex- posed to the weather of severe winter, he would never take either a cold, pleurisy or pneumonia, and would be absolutely free from them. But when you are in Rome you must do the Romans do and take warm rooms and colds.